I've gone through boards with a one inch punch with barely any effort, and also failed several times, and it has always been down to the person or persons holding the board for me.

That at least takes a measure of skill.

I would say, kinda but not entirely. IME as a practitioner in my youth, I would say that breaking the mental barrier to throw a good punch is a thing that needs to be broken as part of the martial arts training. Another thing that a good training gives you and not many people understand is the preparation to receive a punch, not cower in fear and still keep a sound mind to try to recover and react.

note that almost any fighters knuckles will be more solid as the lattice structure of the bone gradually fills in. that doesn’t cause as many mobility issues, it’s when you get new growth on the outside that problems start.

I watched closely and his hands didn't seem to be much use for anything else.

Can you point to a solid source on this? Googling tibia fibula synostosis muay thai, and similar, doesn't turn up anything relevant to conditioning.

So you're saying it's all for show, like some 10 kilo barbell weights being ridiculously oversized just to soothe the ego?

Ego develops at higher mass.

It's meant to develop confidence.

While it may look like a dance when a single practitioner is doing a kata or “form”, it’s anything but a performance or a dance. There’s full contact, pit, octagon, Bellator, K1, and various other avenues to “practice” your martial art on someone’s face.

I've spent years doing no contact karate, and years more doing full contact (but not full force) sparring in Thai and Western kickboxing. For the latter, there's not really a performative aspect to it. Nobody is watching, there's no forms, no real room for fancy flourishes that waste time. I get punched in the face a lot (I'm not very good), and have had the wind knocked out of me many times. I've also spent significant time doing the song and dance (literally) kickboxing at the local YMCA, which was more like Zumba than traditional martial arts.

All of it is great fun and exercise. There's nothing wrong with any of those approaches as long as it fits what you're looking for. There are a LOT of gyms and styles and teachers out there!

On a semi-related note, "liberal arts" refers to the skills that would be required to participate in a free society, particularly to participate in informed discussions on social and political matters. That's why liberal arts includes subjects such as math, science, geology, and public speaking. It feels like many people are not aware of that, which ironically is due to a want of proper liberal arts education.

Lyoto Machida uses Sumo as part of his MMA. At our school we've found it's pushing techniques useful once your get an opponent off balance.

The locks in Aikido are useful as pain compliance techniques used by people like law enforcement or bouncers. Compared to an art like Judo, the "throws" in Aikido generally don't throw your opponent to the ground and do damage. Instead they tend to cause your opponent to stumble away from you. Therefore, they aren't very useful in competition but they are useful in self defense where they can create an opening to get a weapon or escape.

The "dance and performance" (kata?) is essentially slow-motion practice of moves and responses. You are muscle-memorizing moves that you would deploy at full speed in a non-pratice scenario. It certainly looks like dance, and it feels a bit like dance too.

Because it's slowed-down continuous motion, you have to concentrate on keeping your balance. When that's translated to a non-practice scenario, it results in greater precision both in terms of motion and of force-delivery. Performing katas also develops strength; I gave up tai-chi because after every class, my whole body would ache.

Hell, that's why instead of saying "warrior" or "war", the English term is a euphemistic reference to an old god -- god of war, sure, but an indirect reference, suitable for polite society.

Dance appears to be a very natural and primal form of human ritual, so it's not surprising that most cultures have utilized it as a way for warriors to build confidence and demonstrate their attributes & skills.

You won't see a piece of plywood being broken this way.

I still think most people in the world wouldn't be able to break 2 pavers with no spacers. :)

I still wish to believe that the crème de la crème, or the top 0.1% of the karate world, can muster enough force to break concrete regardless of any tricks.

Still, nothing will detract from the visceral wonder that I could never forget after seeing, in person, an extremely high ranked karateka (i.e. second in the world, in his style) chop a seemingly solid block of ice over a foot thick.

I suspect that, while there might be "a trick" behind these things, extreme achievements in that field are still rare and accomplished acts, as they are in any. The wonderment need not be fully extinguished.

You see similar things with e.g. juggling where entertainers will do a lot of things that make it look harder. This doesn't mean that it's not difficult to juggle 7 objects.

Sometimes wooden boards are baked to make them weaker.

Only sometimes though.

There's a "trick" to legitimate breaking in that the practitioner is choosing materials and techniques that lend themselves to breaking, but that doesn't mean that the actual break is faked.

On the other hand, it's also possible to fake a break. For example, you can cut a piece of ice in half, put some water on each end of the cut, and stick them back together in the freezer so that the ice appears to be solid but actually has a weak spot.

There can also be an element of showmanship. Even if a martial artist has done a break dozens of times, during a demo they might make a show of having to hype themselves up for the break, tensing their muscles with a dramatic hiss of their breath, etc.

So maybe all karate isn't equal.

Take one of your boards and hold it with the grain horizontally instead of vertically. Try not to break your hand.